A small group of families control many of the world’s finest diamonds, their firms enduring with the resilience of the stones they love. Elisabeth Galvin and Emilie Yabut-Razon investigate the attraction.

Marilyn monroe put diamonds on the modern-day map with her breathy rendition of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend in the 1953 movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The song will live forever as a defining moment in the post-war period when diamonds were becoming the sparkling symbols of jetset glamour and luxurious tokens of engagement.

The song built on the foundation laid in 1947 when a young advertising copywriter in Philadelphia, Frances Gerety, came up with the slogan “A Diamond is Forever” for a De Beers campaign. In four simple words, she managed to link the indestructibility of the stone and enduring commitment. The romantic phrase caught on and has been so successful that in 1999 it was declared the advertising slogan of the century.

Until the 18th century, India was thought to be the only source of diamonds­—carbon crystals formed at great heat and pressure, as opposed to other gems, which are formed from different elements. They were considered so rare and valuable that in the 13th century, Louis IX of France enacted a law reserving them exclusively for the king. The stones then began appearing in royal jewellery, and later in jewels owned by the aristocracy and the wealthy merchant class. 

The French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier made six voyages to India in the 1630s to procure treasures for Louis XIV. He also obtained a 45.52-carat gem known today as the Hope Diamond, but initially as the 116-carat French Blue. It was lost in the French Revolution and resurfaced in 1839 in the gem collection of Henry Philip Hope. It was acquired by Pierre Cartier in 1910 and, almost 30 years later, by Harry Winston.


Diamond discoveries in South Africa in the late 1800s sparked a rush of prospectors and led to the opening of the Kimberley mine. The new source increased the world’s supply, pushing down prices. English businessman Cecil Rhodes realised the huge potential if the throng of competing miners could be consolidated and the industry regulated. In 1888 he founded the De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited, which controlled 90 per cent of the world’s diamond production by the time he died in 1902. In 1927, De Beers was taken over by Ernest Oppenheimer, whose family finally sold its stake in 2011 to the mining giant Anglo American.

Since the 1920s, a group of jeweller families around the world have established themselves as connoisseurs of diamonds, purchasing the most rare and fantastic discoveries for record-breaking sums to add to their collections or to share in the form of high jewellery creations. These dynasties build on the stone’s mystique, shaping the diamond’s image for each decade and generation. The following four families number among them.

New Blood

“I often see some of the world’s most beautiful jewellery just at family dinners. My mother and grandmother have exceptional collections,” says Rachel Slack, the great granddaughter of Ernest Oppenheimer. While her family is no longer the managing shareholder of De Beers, Slack is carrying the Oppenheimer legacy into the future with diamonds as her guiding light. 

“I’ve grown up with diamonds and talk of diamonds. I was brought up to have a love and reverence for these mysterious stones. It’s about values and timelessness. But above all, diamonds represent love,” says Slack, the business partner of Jessica McCormack, jewellery designer to the stars (Rihanna was her first customer and Madonna is a fan). 

“I met Jessica in 2006 when I commissioned her to design a pair of diamond earrings using millennium diamonds given to me by my grandfather, Harry,” says Slack. The stones were from De Beers’ Millennium Collection, released in 1999 for the new millennium. McCormack was working at the time from a tiny studio at London’s Hatton Garden diamond market. “It was charming and littered with sketches of diamond earrings, diamond hair pieces, diamond necklaces,” remembers Slack. “It was heaven. We discovered that we shared a great passion for diamonds.”


Four years later, Slack joined McCormack as her business partner. Their company operates like a small family firm, with wealthy collectors commissioning bespoke pieces. 

“We have purposely grown slowly and steadily over the past few years. To us, it is all about quality, not quantity,” says Slack. “We are in this business for the long term.” The Jessica McCormack salon, which opened in London in 2013, is the only place their jewellery is sold. 

American Beauties


Harry Winston is responsible for a significant amount of Hollywood’s sparkle, having lent and sold millions of dollars worth of diamonds to celebrities. But he came from less glamorous beginnings, born in New York to poor immigrants from Ukraine. With no formal education, he worked in his father’s jewellery shop and eventually established his own. 

Winston began making a name for himself in 1926 when he acquired the jewellery collection of Arabella Huntington, wife of US railway magnate Henry Huntington. He is the subject of many colourful tatler_tatler_stories, including one of how he and his wife, Edna, saved millions of dollars worth of diamonds from the Nazis when they were in the south of France—Edna hid them in her girdle. 

In 1935, Winston purchased his first important stone, the Jonker, a 726-carat uncut rough diamond. Five years later, inspired by the geometry of nature, he pioneered the technique the company is most famous for—clustering, in which metal settings are minimised and the brilliance of each diamond is maximised. In 1949, Winston acquired the jewellery collection of American socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean, which included the 95-carat Star of the East.

Winston built a thriving company over 40 years, operating from a workshop above his store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, a corner building that remains the flagship store today. He was also known for his philanthropic work, and in 1958 donated his most famous gem, the Hope Diamond, to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where it has since been seen by more than 100 million visitors.

After he died in 1978, elder son Ron took over the company, with younger son Bruce to share equally in its proceeds, but the brothers fell out after a decade. Years of wrangling ended with the controlling interest being bought in 2004 by Aber Diamond Corporation, followed in 2013 by the Swatch Group’s US$1 billion takeover. 

Oriental Expertise

In Asia, among the families with the longest connection to diamonds is that of Cheng Yu-tung, who owns the world’s largest jewellery brand, Chow Tai Fook. The company traces its origins back to Mainland China, where it was founded in 1929. It opened its first shops in Macau and Hong Kong a decade later, focusing initially on gold jewellery. 

In 1973, Chow Tai Fook started a partnership with Zlotowski, which was a “sightholder”—a company authorised by the De Beers-controlled Diamond Trading Company’s (DTC) to purchase rough diamonds in the strictly regulated market. Chow Tai Fook was one of the first retailers in the region to collaborate with DTC, and two decades later Chow Tai Fook itself became a DTC sightholder. In 2009, Chow Tai Fook also became a sightholder for Rio Tinto Diamonds, which has the world’s only supply of pink diamonds. The following year, with a record bid of US$35.3 million, the company won a 507-carat rough diamond named the Cullinan Heritage after the area in South Africa where it was discovered—also where the world’s largest polished diamond, the 530.2-carat Great Star of Africa, was found. The company plans to unveil the Cullinan Heritage 1, a 104-carat D-colour internally flawless diamond cut from the rough stone, this year. It will be set in a beautiful masterpiece designed by a renowned jewellery artist whose name is yet to be revealed.

“We could not be more excited to become part of the Cullinan legend and to share the birth of this masterpiece with the world,” says Henry Cheng, chairman of the Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group. “The finished piece will represent the full force of our expertise at every stage of the process of creating diamond jewellery—from the sourcing of the best rough stones, to their expert cutting and polishing and, finally, to designing and setting them with exceptional artistry.”

Humble Beginnings

Throughout his five-decade career in the industry, Laurence Graff is said to have handled more diamonds of notable rarity and beauty than any other jeweller. “I truly believe this is what I have been born to do,” says Graff, chairman of Graff Diamonds, the company he established in London in 1960. “When I was younger it was an inherent feeling, and that feeling has now turned into a lifelong passion,” he adds.  

Graff’s stellar career began humbly. He grew up in London’s East End and at the age of 15 became apprenticed to a jeweller in Hatton Garden. But after three months he was told he wouldn’t make the grade and had no future in the industry. “I didn’t give up but moved on with more determination to succeed,” says Graff. Within a few years he had a couple of jewellery stores of his own, and then went on the road with a bag of gems, building contacts with moneyed clients and royalty around the world. 

Graff Diamonds has grown to be one of the most respected and innovative retailers, with 40 stores globally. “It’s been said that more rare and historical diamonds have passed through the house of Graff than any other jeweller,” says Graff, citing the example of the Letšeng Star, which the company acquired for US$16.5 million. Found in 2011, the 550-carat stone, which came from the Letšeng mine in Lesotho, took 13 months to cut and polish using a special computer system. The stone was split into several pieces and used in a special nature-inspired collection, one item of which is a butterfly brooch with a 30-carat pear-shaped diamond in its wing. “Through this we set an unsurpassed standard of excellence and innovation,” Graff says.

Graff’s son Francois is the company’s CEO, brother Raymond manages the workshop and nephew Elliott is responsible for stock and production. “We work together to always be the very best, operating at the very pinnacle of the jewellery industry,” says Graff, who sees a bright future for diamonds. He believes stones will only increase in value because of the “extremely high” demand for large, high-quality and rare-coloured diamonds, and the fact that new discoveries are scarce.

“There has to be mystique in a jewel, something enthralling and beautiful about it to capture the imagination,” says Graff.

“I have the same passion and desire for diamonds as I did when I first started in the industry. I believe I am the luckiest man in the world, because I see diamonds every day.”